Tip Not Included
(Germany, 1966)

Director: Helmut Ashley, Screenplay: George Hurdalek, Producer: Heinz Willeg, Original Music: Peter Thomas, Cinematographer: Franz Xaver Lederle, Film Editor: Alfred Srp, Production Designer: Otto Pischinger, Dieter Reinecke, Production Manager: Bernd Burgemeister, Rolf L. Freisler, Uwe Gravenholdt, Assistant Director: Alexander von Richthofen, Fight Co-ordinator: Bob Lerrick
Cast: George Nader (Jerry Cotton), Yvonne Monlaur (Violet), Horst Tappert (Charles Anderson), Heinz Weiss (Phil Decker), Ullrich Haupt (George Davis), Walter Rilla (John M. Clark), Helga Schlack (Helen), Christian Doermer (Tommy Wheeler), Birke Bruck (Mary), Arthur Brauss (Billyboy), Axel Scholtz (Happy),  Ilija Ivezic (Caruso), Rainer Brandt (Stanley), Richard Münch (Mr. High),  Horst Hesslein, Bob Lerick, Jochen Sehrndt (Thugs), Joachim Nottke (Narrator (voice)), Pierre Richard (Chuck), Hans Waldherr (Kingkong)

OT: Die Rechnung - Eiskalt Serviert
AT: A Cold-Blooded Affair, De Rekening ijskoud geserveerd (NL), Un cerceuil de diamants (FR)

Tip Not Included is Jerry Cotton’s cinematic case #4. Jerry Cotton is a German publishing phenomenon, an FBI pulp fiction crime fighter who was created in 1954 and 50 years - and more than 2000 novels later – has still not lost any of his appeal. The novels are published anonymously to help create the illusion that they are really based on true adventures by the first person narrator, G-Man Jerry Cotton. The writers have to stick to a very rigid code that does not allow a lot of creative input and amongst other things forbid Cotton to be romantically involved with the opposite sex.

The success of these books spawned a series of eight Jerry Cotton movies that were filmed between 1965-69. The character was played by US actor George Nader whose career Stateside was going nowhere fast after he fell victim to some vicious gay bashing studio politics. Universal Studios had freely supplied gossip magazine “Confidential” with details of Nader’s gay life style in exchange for keeping the magazine quiet about anything relating to their own box office star Rock Hudson.

In the movies Cotton is one heck of fella: He drives a red Jaguar, never loses his cool, and has a quiff that would give Elvis a run for his money. The films are packed with action. Even some often dodgy stock footage of New York can’t mar the overall entertainment value of these productions.

In Tip Not Included Yvonne Monlaur plays Violet, a nightclub singer in a Playboy Bunny-esque lounge, and gets to sing two of Peter Thomas’ catchy tunes. (“I want to be near to you/I want to be kissing you/If I close my eyes/I’m in paradise.") Truth be told it may not necessarily be Monlaur herself who sings – I strongly suspect that she was dubbed – but she nevertheless strikes quite a stylish pose in this black and white thriller. Her character is involved with an unemployed chemist (Christian Doermer) whose expertise is needed to develop bombs for an ingenious heist by the Charles Gang. His attempt to double-cross his gang by selling the info out to a mysterious stranger (Rainer Brandt) leads to his early death.

Cotton first encounters Violet and her boyfriend when he visits the bar in which she performs in order to enjoy a relaxing after work whiskey. Needless to say, he is not able to finish his drink: A little bit less than a sip later he is already madly involved in an elevator brawl with a couple of thugs who are after Violet’s sweetheart.

From then on the film takes off with the usual breathtaking speed that can be expected from a movie of the series. The film’s heist of an armed treasury van involves a clever magnetic bomb device that gets attached to the van from underneath a bridge and blows the car to pieces. Cotton nobly accepts responsibility for sending the multi million dollar transport off to prevent the suicide of the guilt ridden director of the treasury department (Walter Rilla)… just to see him succumb to a heart attack only seconds later! That temporarily costs Cotton his licence, though it’s still him who Violet prefers to call when she gets kidnapped. When Cotton takes the call in his swell apartment he is seen wearing a suave bathrobe with JC monogram. He straight away jumps into his Jaguar to save the damsel. (Luxury apartment? Monogrammed bath robes? Jaguars? Yes, I know, life seems to be good if you work for the FBI!) He can save Violet in a big shoot out, nearly gets arrested – suspended FBI agents shouldn’t carry guns! –, then follows a lead into a wrestling arena. This is years before wrestling hit the main stream with WWF and what we see is a bunch of sweaty, ugly guys jumping each other. One double cross follows the other. There just ain’t loyalty amongst thieves any more. And just when the pace threatens to slow down we see gangster moll Mary (Birke Bruck) taking a very revealing shower. She wears nothing but her glasses which manage to stay steam free. Wow, that was a first for a Cotton Krimi! Somehow nude scenes always look very naughty but nice when shot in black and white. Cotton generally has little time for romantic hanky panky so fast forward to a scene where he nonchalantly jumps off a sky scraper (!) to hang on to an escaping helicopter. The subsequent flight action is marred by the dodgy rear projection, yet picks up when the helicopter approaches a lake and we see the stunt man hanging on for his life when his feet are gliding through the water.

For Monlaur this proved to be her final motion picture. She subsequently only had one more appearance in Der Tod läuft hinterher, an incredibly popular German TV Krimi serial in three parts that also starred a bunch of familiar faces from the Edgar Wallace movies such as Joachim Fuchsberger, Pinkas Braun and Elisabeth Flickenschildt.

After a very successful 10 year career in European films that had her involved in Hammer movies (Brides of Dracula, Terror of the Tongs), general British Horror (Circus of Horrors) as well as French movies with Cult actor Eddie Constantine (Lemmy pour les dames, Nick Carter va tout casser), Monlaur decided that it was time to concentrate on raising her son and move away from the film business.

Tip Not Included is an excellent swan song for Monlaur and offered a wonderful opportunity to admire her elegant French beauty one last time again on the big screen. While on production she was twice involved in accidents: During a fight scene she mistakenly hit through a window and suffered cuts on her arm. And if that wasn’t bad enough some fireworks barely missed her eyes by just a few inches. Little wonder she subsequently opted for a quiet retirement.

For Tip Not Included the German producers went into a French co-production with Produx in Paris. As a result they had the biggest budget for a Jerry Cotton production so far: 1,000,000 DM.

Horst Tappert had earlier on in 1966 played the “Major” in Die Gentlemen bitten zur Kasse, a 3-part German TV mini-series based on the Great Train Robbery in 1963. That series was one of the most popular TV events of the year and led directly to his involvement in the Jerry Cotton movie. His role here as the head of the treasury robbing Charles Gang was also quite clearly inspired by the audacious robbery that made reluctant – and sometimes not so reluctant – real-life anti-heroes out of its members, most notably Ronnie Biggs who for decades turned into Britain’s most notorious fugitive and often granted interviews from the safe environs of his mansion in Brazil prior to finally returning back to the UK where he now serves his sentence.

Rainer Brandt makes for a very convincing menacingly mysterious figure looming in the shadows. Though he is an excellent actor in his own right, he is primarily known for his dubbing work as he owns the most famous dubbing studio in Germany. Though there cannot be a single German who has never heard his voice, his success has also made him a bit of a controversial figure as he often went far and above just translating the contents of the scripts and instead casually “improved” these by creating his own brand of slapstick related dialogue, most (in)famously by dubbing Tony Curtis in the German version of the TV series The Persuaders. His work (accurate or not) on dubbing the likes of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer as well as a whole bunch of other European productions was instrumental in making these an enormous success on the German market. He was also the voice of Jean-Paul Belmondo and already had his first encounter with Jerry Cotton in the previous film 3-2-1 Countdown for Manhattan for which he dubbed Allen Pinson’s character Harry. He also provided the German voice for Brad Harris’ Capt Tom Rowland  in the Kommissar X movies that were also based on a popular German crime fiction series. Ironically for someone who is widely known for his dubbing work, his part in Tip Not Included required him for the largest part to loom silently in background.

Arthur Brauss plays Billyboy, one of the gang members, and was to return to the Cotton series three years later in the final film: Todesschüsse am Broadway/Death Shots on Broadway.

Helmut Ashley, the director, started his career as a cinematographer and ended up a popular director for German TV Krimis. He also was director of G.K. Chesterton adaptation Das Schwarze Schaf/The Black Sheep and Edgar Wallace movie Das Rätsel der Roten Orchidee/The Secret of the Red Orchid.

Overall Tip Not Included is a very typical and entertaining example of the Jerry Cotton series at its best. This would be the last black and white production. The remaining movies were all shot in colour, though the subsequent one (Der Mőrderclub von Brooklyn/Body in Central Park) still started with a black and white pre-credit scene that consisted of material shot but not used for Tip Not Included.

Further Reading:

Very little in English about Jerry Cotton, so better brush up on your German.

Bastei
The official page from the Jerry Cotton publishers.

Latarnia Forums
A place to discuss Jerry Cotton as well as other German Krimis

Buy:

All the Jerry Cotton movies are now available on two Dutch limited box sets - one for the four black and white, another one for the coloured films that can be ordered through the friendly folks of Xploited Cinema. With one exception they all have both the German as well as the English soundtrack. Tip Not Included is available on Box Set. Although my own box describes these as Region 2 discs, it appears they are indeed Region 0. If you order from the US, make sure your player can handle these.